Walmart Worker Gets Run Over Trying To Stop Robbery

A 24-year old Walmart electronics worker is in critical condition after he tried to prevent a robbery. A female customer asked him about hard drives and then grabbed a boxed hard drive out of his hands and fled the store. The Walmart worker pursued. She jumped into a car with a waiting driver. He tried to stop her and the car, but it sped away, knocking him down and running him over.

Do not risk your personal health trying to stop a robbery. That’s what cops and insurance are for.

That’s a baseless and asinine accusation. It was apparently intended as a joke, but how is it funny when only a fool would think Walmart would do that? Where’s the humor in criticizing a company for something they don’t do?

Isn’t obvious that someone pissed in his cornflakes this morning and he’s lashing out because YouDidWhatNow? failed to make him laugh. This is apparently punishable by evisceration of YouDidWhatNow?’s cynical statement.

It was semi-sorta funny and had insight to the ways that Walmart (along with any retailer) would do things if they could. It hearkens back to the Domino’s driver who had to repay the cash stolen from him on a delivery through payroll deductions.

Because he got injured on the job. Their workmans comp insurance already covers him. Their rates have already gone up as a result of the increased risk. They gain nothing other than bad PR by firing him now.

Because their insurance still has to pay him whether or not he is employed. If they don’t fire him they can get some use out of him once he leaves the hospital. If they fire him workmans comp pays him for not working. They can try to get workmans comp to not pay the claim but they are under insurance regulations and the government can, and frequently does just take the money as an administrative measure. So it does not serve Walmart to fire him. What they do is what most corps do. They have him on limited bitch work until he quits or gets better and then they fire him. When I worked for a wholesaler we would occasionally have employees who would get injured and we would make them staple paper packets for 8 hours a day.

its not sad! he WILL be fired. and likely responsible for his own medical bills. its an insurance company and corporate liability MANDATE. stop claiming business owners are evil assholes, its insurance companies that force them to do things like this.

It’s just stuff. It was just one item, not all that expensive, and Wal-mart has insurance for this sort of thing.

I’d be willing to be that the employee wouldn’t have given chase had she not grabbed it right out of his hands. It probably pissed him off and is more like someone is robbing you instead of just the store.

That was my thought exactly. All of the comments seem to focus around the dollar amount of the item, insurance companies, and store policy. But really, this guy was probably just mad that someone stole directly from him (out of his hands), was pumped up on adrenaline, and had a deep rooted desire to stop a bad guy. It had nothing to do with the value of the item stolen.

This isn’t the first item that’s mentioned “{Merchant} has insurance for theft”…guess what? I bet they do but the deductible is very high.

So high in fact that it would only for if someone broke into the store and stole a bunch of upscale HDTVs. Or all the cash in the safe.

Insurance does not work that way. Do you think you can file a claim for every little thing you lose on homeowner’s insurance? If it was covered, you’d be cancelled quicker than you think, and then your property would have a big red flag on CLUE, leading to higher rates…..

I’m also thinking that in the second he had to make the decision, he may have been afraid he’d be fired if he didn’t stop the thief. After all, they basically took the merchandise directly out of his hands, making it more his fault than if they had stolen something off a shelf.

Couldn’t have said it any better. This poor sap put his life on the line for all the wrong reasons. I hope he makes it through alright and doesn’t get fired, but I don’t see it happening. IF he makes it, he’s gonna get canned, and probably have to pay his own medical bills. All that for a fucking hard drive. Very dumb move…

I had a friend who worked for 7/11, and they were very specific that if you tried to thwart a robbery, stop a shoplifter, or chase after a drive-off, you’d be fired. Corporate didn’t want employees to get hurt, say by being run over by someone, trying to stop a crime.

The American shopper is so brainwashed as to the value of the crap we purchase that we are willing to risk our lives, and risk the lives of others, to stop the invalid transfer of said crap from one party to another.

I put this in the same basket as those fatal trampings that happen around Thanksgiving weekend.

My proposition is that we value human life less (comparatively) because advertisers push to make us value material possessions more than they are worth, and that this started in the 20s.

I doubt shopkeepers in Athens would risk their lives to stop a man who stole an apple, as much as they would a man who stole a necklace. Advertisements corrupt our sensibilities and makes us believe that the apple is so good that it is worth the same as the necklace.

A long time ago we did not have insurance, if someone stole something from you, you were SOL. A long time ago it was less of a crime to harm minorities or the indigent, so you had no fear of reprisal for carrying out vigilante justice.

In todays environment, if not for the false valuing of material goods, people would not go to the lengths they do.

The tramplings that occur around Black Friday are a direct result of advertising and the overvaluing of material goods.

You are insane. A shopkeeper in Athens would grab that apple thief and have his hands cut off. Ok, maybe Greece didn’t have that form of punishment, but other civs throughout history did. Point being the value of that apple was greater than the value of a man’s body.

Horse thieves and cattle rustlers were hung in this country in the 1800s.

And you want me to believe human life is worth less now, compared to the past?

If he was on the clock he would have to get worker’s comp, and I am sure that Walmart will be fighting to make the guilty pay the bill after that. Even if they have a signed document in their employee policy on how to handle theft they will still have to pay workers comp benefits. This person was dealing with a customer after all. Now Walmart’s goal will be to get the employee to come back to work ASAP to reduce their insurance payout. Firing the employee could very well happen later, but it will be for other documented causes.

My cousin got fired when he ended up tackling a shoplifter in the mall.They went to court and everything, cousin ended up losing his apartment and last I heard was living with a friend in a basement apartment

I hope it was a high rpm drive. I would never consider for a second to physically try to stop someone stealing a hard drive. Especially the price per gb of platter drives. You seriously under value your own life.

Someone TOTALLY needs to make a video game called WalMart Rampage where they run over as many greeters and WM “Security” people as possible in the parking lot after luring them out with thefts, or just stay in the store and lynch the receipt nazis then go use tactical nukes to blow up HQ and follow Lee Scott home and dynamite him there. They would be doing the virtual world a favor, not to mention local virtual communities a favor economically.

Back in the real world, gee Bubba, maybe stop acting like a cop when you’re not one, and enjoy that tire mark tattoo on your face! On the other hand I hope Bubba sues WM corporate for the damages just because they suck, and they probably encourage people like Bubba to be “heroes” and get hurt, and they further take out a life insurance on Bubba he isn’t aware of banking he’ll buy it just so in the parking lot.

Yes, robbery is wrong, but THIS IS WHAT WALMART GETS WHEN EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY CUSTOMER IS TREATED LIKE A CRIMINAL AROUND RECEIPTS. BRAVO!

gc3160thtuk says you got your humor in my sarcasm and you say you got your sarcasm in my humorsays:

You know how all those people defend stores when they fire employees who chase after shoplifters?

This. Is. Why.

A hard drive isn’t worth your life. If someone is stealing from you, you cannot rely on them acting responsibly when you try to apprehend them. No one at Wal-Mart is happy that this happened. There is a lot to rightfully demonize the company for, but this is one area where I believe the genuinely are concerned for their employee’s safety. I’ve been through retail training so I know this is something the store would have repeatedly told this employee not to do. But as we’ve seen time and again employees seem to not pay attention to repeated safety warnings. I don’t really know how to fix that, but one way is to stop blaming stores that fire employees for running after shoplifters. They genuinely do that to try to save lives.

I’ve chased after a shoplifter. It was stupid and dangerous and I could have seriously gotten hurt, but in the heat of the moment, andrenaline kicked in and I didn’t even think about it when I took off after her. The best part was watching her dive through the window of the getaway car as it was trying to pull away with her hanging out of it.

This is why I liked working for Krogers. They shelled out the cash for an actual police office to do security work, that way if the shoplifter runs he can just shoot their dog instead of get run over. And it’s not like this is a Wal-Mart exclusive policy- most retail places will instruct you to avoid hazardous situations when dealing with shoplifters. It’s just dumb to get yourself hurt because you think you’re protecting your employers’ bottom line.